With the 2022-23 regular season a week away, ESPN’s Zach Lowe published his 11th annual League Pass rankings. The purpose of the exercise is to mathematically figure out how aesthetically pleasing and watchable all 30 teams in the league will be this season.
The League Pass rankings are not a traditional power ranking but are ordered from 1 to 30 depending on the total scores they get from the five categories they are graded on with a 1 to 10 scale:
“ZEITGEIST: When you talk about this team at parties, do people slink away?
HIGHLIGHT POTENTIAL: Do you linger on games in case a superstar does something amazing?
STYLE: Where are they on the continuum from “Golden State Warriors beautiful game” to “Julius Randle just took four jab steps and launched an 18-footer”?
LEAGUE PASS MINUTIA: All the little things that mean too much to damaged die-hards: announcers, court designs, uniforms.
UNINTENTIONAL COMEDY: Google the Washington Wizards of the early 2010s.”
The Oklahoma City Thunder come in at 27th overall, with a total score of 21.5.
“They’d be at least three spots higher with Chet Holmgren healthy. Without him, the roster is a morass after the strange-but-cool Shai Gilgeous-Alexander/Josh Giddey/Luguentz Dort trio. I mean this in a good way: It is really hard to find a perimeter trio with almost zero overlapping skill among them.
Giddey is the tall genius passer who dares long-range, no-look lasers with zero margin for error. Dort is the brick wall who lofts ceiling-scraping 3s and bulldozes inside. Gilgeous-Alexander is the ungraspable phantom, everywhere and nowhere at once as he slithers into the lane — different limbs seemingly operating at different speeds, and moving in different directions.
Good luck distributing minutes beyond that. If you’re chasing wins, you’d play Kenrich Williams and Mike Muscala. Then there are at least seven young guys who merit time, including three of the first 34 picks in the last draft.
Aleksej Pokusevski has shown hints that he’s a basketball player, not just a gangly novelty. He has vision, and a knack for blocking shots. (Does he think you get more points if jumpers go in at higher velocities?) Tre Mann is crafty. If a Darius Bazley corner 3 hits the side of the backboard, does it make a noise? (Don’t sleep on the Thunder hiring Chip Engelland — longtime assistant coach and shooting guru for the Spurs.)
A juicy subplot: Midtier playoff teams cannot afford losses to the Wembanyama Brigade. Those can be the difference between No. 6 and the play-in. The Thunder signaled doom for the Los Angeles Lakers last season with two massive early comeback wins.
The broadcast is less propaganda-y than it once was. Progress!”
When the Thunder lost Chet Holmgren for the entire season, the franchise lost a lot of its flare for why people outside of Oklahoma should care about the team. As Lowe mentions, a healthy Holmgren means they’d probably be in the top 25 of this list.
The only teams with a lower score than the Thunder are the San Antonio Spurs, Indiana Pacers and Utah Jazz.
